When I first received this piece of kit I thougt it was absolutely wonderful, but the more I use it the more its restrictions reaaly bug me. 1: having plotted out a potential route, it is almost impossible to print it out at any useful scale or on anything other than A4 - which with my eyesight is virtually useless. 2: the menu bar on the side takes up far too much space and cannot be moved or resized. I even tried on a higher res monitor and it just got bigger..... 3: the menu structure is not nearly obvious enough - this is the first package for years that I've actually HAD to read the instructions to get some fundemental features to work. 4: it won't accept AIS inputs.
If you can take it on board then its much more useful, but I won't be chancing my laptop at sea.
Must admit I have only risked the laptop in very calm weather while running reviews! If you're going to use it regularly it must have a secure stowage. One friend has his in its own padded compartment inside the chart table, with a separate, permanently installed monitor, but that's starting to get seriously expensive. A dedicated plotter is better, unless you are going long distances and want the laptop to receive weather data etc as well as nav info. Thank you for your thoughts on the Admiralty software. I think your expereience confirms their claim that it's a good starting point. Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be much between the £50 starter package and the hugely expensive "professional" solutions.
Cathy: You're spot on there, that's one of the things thata attracted me to it in the first place "at last the prices are coming down" I thought... ho hum....
As you say, a dedicated chartplotter does the job, but at a price. I think I've got to the point whre I can build up a mini itx PC and lcd monitor for about the same price as a chart plotter, and it would be capable of so much more - but how reliable will it be after being bounced around half the solent and back? I even thought of getting a cheapo laptop off ebay and just accepting that it probably wouldn't last the season, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing...
They used the RYA Admiralty chart plotter on a course I did at the beginning of the year and the guy teaching it said that it was useful for demonstration purposes but that was about it. Didn't use it myself so can't really comment.
To use the admiralty plotter with my Lifetec laptop I bought a 12-19v power adapter and to connect my garmin gps12 the serial and 12v power connector. It all worked at switch on then power supply plug fell out I made the error of pushing in the laptop plug without first turning everything off and lost the screen backlight light permanently so the whole exercise was an expensive short-lived fiasco. Fortunately the garmin survived ok and I was able to use the laptop with a monitor to recover the data on the HDD. I think the dedicated chart plotter is probably a much more robust solution and I will go for that next time I think.
I use an old Research Machines Notebook computer with Maptech Software as a chart plotter. The machine is quite low powered compared with modern computers but works admirably. It takes GPS data from my GPS by way of a COM1 port (Maptech tells you how to wire it). I have used it all over the Irish sea and think it is brilliant. The RM notebook has a much larger and clearer screen than most affordable chart plotters and the Maptech software is great (cost of each chart about £99). I just fasten the notebook down to the chart table and it is quite safe there.
Hi I have done much the same as everybody else, I bought a monitor on E-Bay which I have mounted along side my ancient dedicated plotter. I fix my laptop in a safe place and the detail etc is much better than my plotter which is 1992 Ratheon which is slow, in black & white and charts are no longer updated my main objection to the RYA plotter is that it does not output NMEA I have repeater on deck not monitor but Autohelm Multi this gives me SOG X track error details of distance to waypoint and bearing etc, all this comes from my dedicated plotter, If I could get this from the laptop I would most likely use it more. I hope they give this facility on the 2007 disk. Other problem with Laptop use is amount of poewer required my dedicated plotter hardly uses any and in 14 years has never crashed.Perhaps I will invest in a new plotter, only problem my present one uses the Radar screen. Regards Mike.
Upload I own a Macgregor 26x. The galley area is not ideal but it does have a very nice cooker with hinged glass lid on top. I place my laptop with non slip feet on top of this. Now for the good bit. I use a simple bog standard sail tie to fix it in position. It is the one with a simple buckle at one end while the other has several inches of velcro. The strap goes around the laptop and under the glass lid back up around snug and it just sits there. The placing is terrific too as i can see the charts, albeit with some squinting from the cockpit area.
I use the admiralty chart plotter as I was fortunate enough to be given it for free. It is very basic but it does work and the charts are bang up to date. I would not buy it though. There are far better products about at similar prices or even a little more. The extra would be worth it in my viev. The most annoying cosmetic thing is the huge space taken up by the menu screen on the left. A massive improvment would be the ability to re size or even get rid of it on demand. My biggest gripe technically is that the software has all the tidal data it needs to set a course to steer, BUT, requires the operator to input tidal set and speed. Why??? It should just do it automatically. If these two things were sorted I might by the newer products as they come along. If they stay as they are, I will just keep this one of the Solent and local area until it becomes too far outdated say the end of 2007. Then check this forum to decide which one to get next. Edited: 28/09/06 10:07:45 AM
I think the Admiralty software is really designed as an introduction to PC chart plotting - if you want better functionality then go with the higher spec packages (for more cash).
As for using a laptop at sea - they are pretty robust and as Dell will sell something perfectly adequate for chart plotting for about £500, even with the expensive software they work out a lot cheaper than a similarly fast chartplotter. For me the big issue with chart plotter is big bucks for a decent size screen whereas a 14" screen is small and cheap on a laptop. Derek Love (above) is concerned about a laptop being bounced about the solent; people I know have a standard Toshiba laptop which has survived 3 years of circumnavigation, including being knocked down off Cartagena and a small wave through the decklight with no ill effects. That said, I wouldn't recommend the wave through the decklight ;-)
I've just bought an RYA - Admiralty CD for the South Coast. It does what it says on the box - introduces you to the concept of using a chart plotter for under £50 and lets you plan routes in the office while the boss isn't looking. I've been playing around for a few weeks with planning and plotting for the spring cruise, the built in tide calculator is superb. I would recommend it to anyone, but bear in mind that they only last (in theory) for 1 year. I'm an IT tekky and have built a PC to use on board with a 15" TFT monitor that runs off (stabilised) 12v dc. I used older components (no heat buildup) and it will be housed in a splash proof case. The CD runs in a virtual drive so the power consumption overall is about 5 amps. The virtual drive means that everything on-screen is instantaneous, no CD lag. My hand held GPS will interface with the serial port, no USB problems. I'm going to use this for a season and then maybe buy a proper plotter for next year. The PC will also be used for storing and editing my digital photos and videos on the move as well (its cost me about £130 in used bits). I have worked with PC's for years and am quite happy to kick them around on a boat, most problems are software based anyway. Laptops are great but very fragile, and they don't like water. Most of all, laptops are very attractive to pirates. Lastly, I wouldn't dream of setting out without paper charts, regardless of electronics.
Hi Paul, glad you are enjoying the Admiralty software, and congratulations on the PC installation. Have you thought about becoming a freelance marine IT tekky and putting similar or customised kit on other people's boats?
If we could all raise our heads for a moment from the flickering blue Parent's screen and Look Out at the Sea, you may notice a few things: it's wet. It's big. It can fill your little plastic leisure toy whenever it feels like it. It's fascinating and meant to be sailed on. So forget laptops, unless the Solent is your world horizon. Get something designed for maritime use i.e. a chart plotter with a decent level of waterproofing. If that's too expensive, you can occupy your time while saving up by Going Sailing, which I am told can still safely be accomplished using primitive equipment.
Whilst I see your point Nick, what about some one like myself who does deliveries - a lot of these boats are minimally equipped so I want something I can carry with me.
Also we have laptop back up to our £100k's of nav equipment in case we have a total power loss on board.
Nick, I support your philosophy of keeping things as simple as possible ("if it ain't on board it can't fail"), and certainly there are some people who get so obsessed with gadgetry that they forget why they went sailing in the first place - to enjoy the "lonely sea and the sky." But there's nothing wrong with information. A dedicated, waterproof chart plotter is great. But it can't download weather info. A laptop can be very useful on board because it can do several different things which each would, otherwise, require their own little black box. But like all electronics, it must be treated as a servant, not a master.
Thanks, Wolfie & Cathy B. As an ex-delivery skipper myself, I well remember the airport slog of the enormous kitbag bulging with kit. New boats always the worst, as the owner was "planning to fit all that stuff myself". Hence my point: Douglas protractor, pencil, eraser and dividers stowed in pockets, I seem to recall! A plotter e.g. GPS292, even with an external antenna, would be a lot lighter than most laptops, and infinitely more reliable, which must be an issue with professional standards to maintain. Total power loss on board, I would have thought, would knock out your laptop in only a couple of hours after losing 12vDC, given the reality of laptop battery life. As for the 'multitasking advantage' of laptops, I would rather lose one function at a time than the whole lot in one go. Look at it this way, if you go for systems redundancy, you get to buy MORE individual bits of electronickery, not less, so it's more fun.... if pricey.
Must admit that on board I'm more likely to use laptop for e-mails and weather rather than nav, so it's not even switched on most of the time. But it is fun to be able to use it for passage planning at home. And I can't take the "proper" plotter ashore!
True, true. Perhaps the day is not far off when someone makes a truly marinized laptop. Or, as boats get more and more standardised and made by fewer and bigger and more automated builders, maybe we'll also see a more 'built-in', 'glass-cockpit' sort of installation, where all you have is a couple of flat screens, a keyboard and mouse, plus cockpit display. Everything is done in software and the supplier/dealer mafia make extra dosh flogging ever-more-elaborate software upgrades. I have met a few new boat-owners recently who are basking in the 'enhanced' safety of having all this info available, but whose ability to deal with seagoing situations WITHOUT the kit is virtually zero, so where has all the 'safety' gone, then? Hurrah for the RYA. Last thought for now: I think the Admiralty meant well with their plotter offering, but have backed the wrong horse in software terms and have been rendered almost irrelevant by the development of the commercial packages. Just keep buying the charts...
Well this topic seems to have aroused emotions a little, but please don't shoot the IT tekky.I have to be up to speed on most IT kit as part of my job so I don't plan to sail with a long tiller extension whilst peering at a flickering screen. I'll tell you a story about GPS. I sailed with a trainee Yachtmaster who was just finishing off his sea time. He pored over paper charts (this was around 1996) and programmed his new electronic toy with waypoints from Soufriere, St Lucia to Kingstown, St Vincent. He taped it onto the binnacle and said, follow the rolling road. It was about 50 miles all told but the track took us through overfalls off St Vincent. Our sister yacht, with another 2 yachtmasters on board went 5 or 6 miles out to sea and surfed down some beautiful rollers all day. I wanted to go after tham but had to follow the rolling road, and I usually follow skipper's orders. Our only consolation was that the skipper's Nikon was soaked by one of the many green ones that came at us from all angles for about an hour. We were safe enough on our 44 foot Gib Sea but he never learnt anything about eyeballs and common sense, and of course looking at charts (electronic or otherwise). I was very impressed with the GPS, even though it nearly got smashed with a number of blunt objects. It was a 2 week cruise that made me decide to give up my yachtmaster course, but that's another story.
